Cyclists Can (and Should) Hold Their Ground

Cyclists generally stand up for their rights, many don’t do a good job of appearing beyond reproach themselves, riding through intersections on red lights and riding on the sidewalk whenever it’s convenient, but in general cyclists are a pretty good bunch.

This cyclist stood up for her right to be in the bike lane without cars:

At around 8:50am on October 20, 2006, on the road from the Zhaoyang East bridge towards the Blue Island Building, a funny episode occurred: a foreigner acted as traffic police and made a small sedan which had gone into the bicycle lane move back out into the car lane.

By the time that I got there, a foreigner had stopped and held her bicycle in the bicycle lane in front of a silver car. She was smiling and saying something to the driver while making gestures. At first I went past and I did not take any photographs. Then I saw the foreigner go past the car and stopped her bicycle in front of the car. So she was trying to get the car to go back into the car lane instead of being in the bicycle lane. This went on for a few minutes. The driver got mad and got out of the car to curse the foreigner. He even picked up the bicycle and hook it. Even so, the foreigner would not budge and she insisted that the car get back on the car lane.

Finally, the car turned back into the car lane. The foreigner then blocked the next car (a white Santana), which quickly retreated and went into the car lane.

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Mike Thomas P.Eng. ENV SP, is the author of UrbanWorkbench.com and Director of Engineering at the City of Revelstoke in the Interior of British Columbia, Canada.
If I post something here that you find helpful as you navigate the world of engineering, planning and building communities, that’s wonderful. But when push comes to shove: This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer.